


Woodchips Burning in the Dry, Dry Earth

by aPaperCupCut



Category: Don't Starve (Video Game), Knock-Knock (Video Game)
Genre: (the lodger speaks atbash cuz uhhhh), AU, Loneliness, M/M, Severe Illness, also the lodger goes by bormot because i read thats his name somewhere. prob on the wiki page, communication barrier, everyones so so lonely, extreme language barrier, extreme symbolism, flowery language, heavy romantic tension, heres this cuz a friend pressured me and then i reread it, lol what am i doing i dont even write dont starve stuff anymore, might turn into wes/lodger/wilson cuz uhhh, mushrooms are in later chapters, over the top metaphors, shadows are jerks, the lodger is bad at feelings, this is so old but i think i might come back to it fairly soon, this is so very au, wes is extremely adept at communicating through pure body language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-11 00:28:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13512954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aPaperCupCut/pseuds/aPaperCupCut
Summary: The Open Door before him, and he approached. The Open Door before him, and he muttered silence and drank absence. He must keep things in order; he must keep the paths clear, in complete order, for the winter creatures that limped up and through the Forest, to breed on the other side. He must keep the Forest, his home, in order. He stepped out onto the damp, damp earth, slippers wettening, bleeding brown water inside his skin. Into the darkened, creaking Forest. (ah, familiar as always)An open door leads to a place the Lodger could never have dreamed up, and people so confusing that he couldn't help but find a home in.





	Woodchips Burning in the Dry, Dry Earth

**Author's Note:**

> Heck I dont know what im doing but it sure isnt what im supposed to be doing. i dont even write dont starve fic anymore, im actually working on completely different stuff, but a friend made me post this, so i reread it for errors, and fell in love with it again. so im probably going to come back to this if people like it

The creaking of the walls gasped around him, the drafts settling their cold grip into his bones. He shuddered in his sleep, mind frozen and glazed with tension.

 

An inhale. Exhale. His limbs twitched, moved without moving, and he strained from moving his skull too quickly for fear of another terrible migraine.

 

Bormot rose as though he were nothing more than an apparition, skeletal, wrapped in a baggy nightgown that hung off his wrists. His house was empty in all the alcoves, but the hallways were trapped with cluttering from centuries long since past.

 

He creaked, akin to wind sliding through narrow crevices, and lit the worn lantern. The mirrors reflected its gaping maw of light, and the windows let in a musty draft by his ears. If he heard any whisper, his brain was quick to smother it within its own folds.

 

He crept out of that room, the room he had awakened in. He always awoke in a different room; his home, his beloved home, had tens of room, some of which he hadn't seen since childhood. _(some of which he'd never known, except in the long walk to dusk)_ He slipped into the embrace of a room soaked in pitch black, already so lost in thought.

 

He reached up with a trembling hand, twisting the bulb carefully before relaxing when the light flickered, then bathed him. Another room, another clean look at the familiar walls _(the eye was no longer watching him; it had seen enough)._ He closed his eyes to the terrible visage of raised emaciated fingers. They seared into his mind, and then he grit his teeth, and moved onward. He ignored the dust of years past, ignored the crumbling skeleton that was not there. _(and if he felt a dull ache in his sternum, and his gaze hesitated at the thin knife that arose from the skeleton’s chest, no one except the Guests knew)_

 

Each room was filled with the artefacts his father, his grandfather, and his eldest fathers had hoarded. Bormot was not one to collect such fragrances and nostalgic dolls, but despite cleaning out each room, each item remained. He supposed he dreamed of doing such work, and then his memory blurred the taste of that thought.

 

He slowed his walk, his own half-remembered words fallen like sand across the ground. There was the sun above now - right ahead, and soon he would be bathed in homely light, warmth in his bones, warmth that had eluded him in the past decades--

 

He promptly climbed the ladder upward,eyes seeking daylight through the dusty windows. Starlight, bright and loud, _(so very cold)_ \- greeted him, and a clammy hand encircled his ribcage.

 

He turned again, and began his ever continuous descent. There was no dream to rise if all he ever saw was night, the dark pitch, cluttered over with impossible constellations. His dreams would not give him peace. _(but anywhere was better than here)_

 

The door slammed open, the house shuddering as if dealt a vicious blow. He stumbled at the last ring, his legs protesting at his abrupt landing.

 

He hummed, perplexed but not surprised. _(could he ever be?)_ Then, slowly, made his way back to the room with his damp bed, with his damp windows, with his damp footprints and hollow mirrors.

 

His feet crumbled wet paper beneath him, wet paper long since forgotten on the wooden floor. He stilled, for a single second, and remembered.

 

_(the hand trembled violently, then tightened its iron grip)_

 

He rose a paper thin hand to his clammy forehead, feeling along the ridges of his skull to his scalp. Fingers ran through delicate hair, and he sighed. He brushed away the violet strands that fell in sheaths from his head, and they settled against the greying baseboards.

 

Nothing _(nobody)_ was there. _(would they ever be?)_

 

The Open Door before him, and he approached. The Open Door before him, and he muttered silence and drank absence.

 

He must keep things in order; he must keep the paths clear, in complete order, for _(the Guests)_ the winter creatures that limped up and through the Forest, to breed on the other side. _(oh, but nothing ever truly left this place, did they?)_

 

He must keep the Forest, his home, in order. _(he could never leave. no one had ever told him they could either)_

 

He stepped out onto the damp, damp earth, slippers wettening, bleeding brown water inside his skin. Into the darkened, creaking Forest. _(ah, familiar as always)_

 

* * *

 

Wet - soaked through. A cold vice around his throat, squeezing his weak larynx. His fingers twitched, and he brought the thin bones to his eyes, flinching when the black water that coated them dribbled onto his cheek. Cold - so very cold, his ribcage shuddering, inhale and then exhale, halting.

 

He rose. The dark screamed. The white, empty sky called, laughed. _(at his misery or at his bliss? at his Knowledge or at his Ignorance?)_

 

Bormot could run - he could flee. The dark screamed, and screamed - howling for his hot, black blood, even as it cooed at him, urging his limping movement forward.

 

Shards of chalky rock scattered around him, the viscous liquid that soaked into his back drying quickly. The earth matted against the fabric of his slippered feet, collecting in clumps as it eagerly drank in the wet of his home. _(but the brown water had long since dried; all that remained was water from saplings he had crushed)_

 

Onward - onward - tree to tree, each one the same but they weren't the _right_ trees, what was wrong with them? _(he had failed, his efforts wasted, for his home was chaos and the order upstaged, and it was his own ruinous -- )_

 

Onward - onward - the night _(but it couldn't be night, his home was always littered with imagined unfamiliar stars, spilt across so thoroughly as to block that peaceful darkness)_ pitch black, just as eager as the dry, dry earth in its desire to consume him whole. _(but it wouldn't consume him, no, of course it wouldn't, his ebony blood was too warm to be wasted, his bones too cold to gnaw upon)_

 

And his ribs ached, his withered lungs forcing hacking coughs, and his skin was sticky with sweat. The candle flickered fitfully, like a child greedily howling for sweets and kindness. He refused to stumble, stretching each skinny, stick-like leg onward in half-felt leaps. Ahead--

 

Light - the light, he needed it, he needed it to put it back in order, to erase the _(Guests, and him)_ nightmares, to wipe away this vision of clumping soil and laughing cold. The frigid hand tenderly stroked his spine, filling him with weak water, and he shuddered.

 

His legs creaked, he could hear it, hear his home _(his guests, his Forest of withering paths) --_

 

A stumble - falling - lightlightlight, _beloved warmth,_ \- _(the_ **_pain_ ** _)_ \--

 

Burning, the dark howling, screaming, crying, it was rending his body to pieces, _(finally)_ he was rotting six feet under, the world spinning like the dome of his youth,  enthralling--

 

He fell.

 

* * *

  

He awoke to the chasm of the sky.

 

Cold, squeezing, crawling inside of him - it had forced his jaws apart and had pulled itself into him. It was squeezing him, it was pushingandpulling him apart - _(a creature that_ **_loved_ ** _his heat, that locked itself within the moist insides of him, that wore him like a cloak)_

 

The sky was white - so white, unlike anything he'd ever seen before. He tested his hand against the ground for a brief moment, flinching away from the stinging cold, that which lived outside of him but continued trying to infest him. _(he was a thin veneer of heat wrapped around ice, Ice which lapped at the pool of warmth in his blood)_

 

Something warm - caressing across his neck and rising to his cheek. A soft hand, checking his temperature.

 

_(he was so cold)_

 

Bormot stiffened, but his arms jut out from underneath the thin blanket, one reaching up to grasp the soft hand.

 

He saw it - he saw it, how it was so warm, dark _(like peace, like the night before dawn),_ beside his own mottled, colorless flesh. _(skin stretched across frigid bone, skin stretched tight across voluminous stars)_

 

He closed his burning eyes to the sight of it, turning away from the sight of his own state.

 

And he fell.

 

* * *

 

The second awakening was no better.

 

Burning eyelids, trembling blankets of skin over his dry eyes, and he kept them shut. The snow _(he hasn't seen it for the longest time)_ was cold beneath his fingers. It tangled just at the fringes of his conscious, just skimming the surface of him.

 

He was warm, unnaturally, like a fever. _(like a gift)_

 

The sky overhead was as the empty pages of his journal; long since corroded and stained, only barely holding the imitation of white cleanliness. Without his smudged, minisculely scrawled words, covering every inch of the page, it almost looked as it had in his childhood. _(before, when his mother had dark hair and lithe fingers)_

 

He turned his head. Heat, red, warm, _(something he missed after they -- )_ and familiar; a fire, rising with grinning hands to the drained sky. A creature lay, slumped, beside it. Long and sinuous, with dark hands and a discolored face, it breathed hollowly.

 

Quiet. _(stay silent for us, please)_

 

Bormot closed his eyes and and was silent.

 

* * *

 

The sky above him. He was sitting upright, feet tucked underneath his knees. His scarf and slippers were beside him. Something warm beat at his face, waves almost burning his ears. There was a wooden bowl in his hands, a thin broth just barely cresting the sides.

 

The being had its thigh pressed into his own, its eyes focused on him. He ignored its bright face, instead looking at the ground.

 

The cold rose from it, even with the fire melting the snow into a gentle froth, which the being scraped away in halting sweeps of its brown hands. Bormot tasted carrot, perhaps some kind of meat, and he swallowed.

 

He was slipping away, he knew. He was slipping away to a nothingness, like those precious moments before dawn, like those precious moments before dusk. There was a hand, leading him downward, and he rested upon rough sheets with something like confusion.

 

Before he fell, a dark hand ran through his hair and closed his eyes.

 

And after he fell, he heard something like concern through its fingers.

 

* * *

 

[He fell in and out of the strange state, in and out of awareness. He was ill, he knew, very ill. The being fed him, gave him water, and he felt, almost, like he had been visited _(finally)_ by his ever late guests.

 

His time spent aware lengthened slowly, but each time he awoke and fell, over and over, the being - was it human? _(he hasn't seen another for so long)_ \- leaned over him, brushing a hand across his forehead and scalp, offering him tea and broth and, once, red berries that made him think of sweet _(red, red, it was all over, when had it reached his scarf?)_ strawberries in his youth.]

 

* * *

 

The night surrounded them, but the fire was warm and the _(creature, snug deep inside his chest, still, even only for this moment)_ cold was quiet. The being leaned against him, and he held the empty bowl tightly. He had snuck his slippers on during the last time he had been this awake, and the being let him keep them. His scarf, when he found it beside his sleeping bag, had been returned to him.

 

It was quiet.

 

And he really did need to break the strange limbo that hung in the air around them, the silence that slowly oozed into his mouth and ears and tasted of cotton - and wasn't it strange that before, when he had been home _(lonely, empty except for him - but the Guests were there, weren't they, to keep him company),_ he had muttered and grumbled and _(denied)_ spoke his thoughts aloud, and now, with another person whom he knew would respond in a clear voice _(and wasn't he getting his hopes up? the Guests had spoken as well),_ he was…. What, afraid?

 

How nonsensical.

 

Bormot needed to speak - he needed to break the quiet, and he would--

 

Distant, almost unnoticeable, except the being stiffened, sitting straight up like a lightning rod. Barking, not unlike a dog except too raspy to truly be one.

 

It was distant, but the being had wide, glazed eyes.

 

He sat, slouched, but suddenly he was drawn tight like a bow, suddenly he was upright, stumbling--

 

A dark hand snatched up a worn bag, the other grasping his upper arm in a stone grip, and their feet were moving, storming along, and Bormot was already wheezing, his feet lurching out in front of him, his knees splaying every which way. But the being kept him moving, tugging him along with smooth, immense strides.

 

The mountain loomed over them, only just barely visible with the torch that hissed and sparked in the being’s hand. The bag thumped against its side, and, closer now, came a screaming.

 

His heart - it pounded, now, and he couldn't stop staring at the mountain, vision fluttering when the darkness bled like blood into the shape of cold, grey rock.

 

Howling - there was screaming, bloody and violent, the colour of violets, shaking against the mountain and it was--

 

A hand against his cheek. The being, now more gently, as though reassured by something _(was it the scream? It went on and on and on and…)_ and it pushed him into the crevice.

 

He was caught before his forehead met the black earth, and something closed behind them with a dull thud.

 

Heavy - heavy, heavy weight above them, enormous, careless, it would crush him, now, now, _(now!)_ \--

 

A hand wrapped around his shoulders, torchlight, so pitifully small and screaming like--

 

_(a child, but he didn't know of any, did you? there was no child in the corner, huddled and crying)_

 

Pale face, discolored against the shell of its ear, black hair draping across its brow, eyes focused into a pinprick against his own.

 

They huddled close together, there beneath the mountain, scampering feet and dying screams just beyond, only just audible. _(trapped as mice might be, trapped in a stone tomb)_

 

And there was silence - like a lie, like a comforting denial. And Bormot knew those well.

 

He was tired - so tired. Morning had come and still he was tired. Already the memories weighed like a boulder upon his shoulders, even as his weariness eroded them.

 

“Dszg rh blfi mznv?” and didn't that ache, just to say. The sound felt wrong in his mouth, and it scraped against the walls of the cavern like a rat skittering inside his home’s walls. Perhaps he shouldn't have said anything at all.

 

The being cocked its head, eyes flickering, but mind elsewhere.

 

“Fn… D-dszg rh blfi mznv…?” He muttered it, anxiety growing, even as he stared intently at the being’s expression.

 

Its eyes grew incredibly round, and he resisted a choked laugh. With its strangely colored face, it looked akin to a clown.

 

It brought a hand up to its mouth, tapping it almost thoughtfully before both its hands - and wasn't that strange, that he grew ever so cold with the withdrawal of the hand wrapped around his shoulders - seemed to dance together.

 

“R wlm’g fmwvihgzmw…”

 

Its eyebrows came down. Face set, it waved its hand, before making an ‘x’ shape with both arms. Did it not understand him? Perhaps they did not speak the same language. How… disappointing.

 

_(and they would never know each other's names if it was so)_

 

Taking the person’s _(it was one, wasn't it, a person, he wasn't wrong)_ hand in his _(he tried not to flinch at the contrasting hues, at his own skeletal skin against the warm brown of the other),_ he tugged the person close.

 

With a stuttering breath, his face warm in the broken torchlight, the pounding of ravenous monsters and trembling screams dying so slowly in his ears, he pressed a thumb to the other’s palm.

 

It stared at him intently, and with a shudder Bormot released its hand. _(what had he done? No-names were what they were, each like contrasting hues of spilt scarlett)_

 

_(just what on the earth was he expecting? he didn't understand himself most of the time. how could another ever hope to try?)_

 

For the rest of that night, he was held close to the other, warmed only by the stream of torchlight and their own body heat.

 

As his eyes slowly closed and his vision blurred and blackened, he wondered if perhaps he was falling, tumbling head first into some deep, black abyss. Sleep was like that, he supposed.

 

And so he fell.

**Author's Note:**

> Hrgghhhhhh i kinda hate how big the line spacing on ao3 is,,,, it looks so bad but i dont really know how to fix it TT.TT


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